Swarmed! 29th September!

[itma]

You would need to turn off the laying workers before introducing them to a real queen.

You might do that by sticking in a frame (or two?) of brood. And give them a week or so before uniting.
Its the lack of brood (not Q) pheromones that turns the workers into layers.


I would infer - comment welcome - that once they are ready for a real Q, if they are given young open brood (a test frame), they would try to make Q cells.
Obviously, you don't want them to take the QCs to completion, but it might be something to indicate they were ready for merging.
That train of thought suggests a frame of brood each week, until seen to be ready ...
The downside might be excessive "worker policing" of the new (unrelated) brood, until they were ready for a new Q. (But it might not.) I don't expect the response is certain.
Hence the standard advice to shrug the shoulders, curse, and get on with shaking out ...

 

[brianmc]

You would need to turn off the laying workers before introducing them to a real queen.

You might do that by sticking in a frame (or two?) of brood. And give them a week or so before uniting.
Its the lack of brood (not Q) pheromones that turns the workers into layers.


I would infer - comment welcome - that once they are ready for a real Q, if they are given young open brood (a test frame), they would try to make Q cells.
Obviously, you don't want them to take the QCs to completion, but it might be something to indicate they were ready for merging.
That train of thought suggests a frame of brood each week, until seen to be ready ...
The downside might be excessive "worker policing" of the new (unrelated) brood, until they were ready for a new Q. (But it might not.) I don't expect the response is certain.
Hence the standard advice to shrug the shoulders, curse, and get on with shaking out ...

Thanks itma,

I was hoping someone would come along and say "if they're only just starting you'll be fine" but I guess not!

I can do a shake out, then move the colony to the other apiary and merge.

Alternately, I could bring the recipient colony to the donor colony and do the shake out with the recipient colony already waiting on the site of the original donor colony. Would that work out? Would it cause fighting? It would save me a trip and time and winter feeding could get going that evening.